A blog on a variety of topics, from politics to religion, from linguistics to science, and from pop-culture to philosophy.

Sunday, April 30, 2006

Texas crude

A county in Texas (of all places) has initiated a boycott of Exxon Mobil until "until gas is down to $1.30 a gallon". 72% of the residents of this rural county have said that they will support the boycott. On the plus side, obesity in the county should drop considerably as all that walking should burn off the burritos. On the other hand, wandering around for 40 years on foot will not bring them to the land of milk and less money for gas. While the oil companies are no doubt reaping windfall profits, they aren't the only drivers (no pun intended) of the market.

The flap with Iran over whether or not they can break the same non-proliferation treaty the US and the rest of the nuclear club has -- even though they never signed -- is one biggie. So is increasing demand from China and India. Then there's instability in Argentina and Nigeria. And, the Iraq war isn't helping any either. And there's market speculation to boot -- but hey, that's Capitalism, good, glorious, all-American Capitalism, at its best.

So, unless the boycott will resolve all those issues, these folks will be wandering the Texas brush following cloudy reasoning for generations -- or until their feet start hurting.